Barbieri, Nicol (2025) Labor Market Flexibility and Life-Cycle Decisions: Three Essays on Work, Retirement, and Family Behavior. [Tesi di dottorato]

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Abstract

This dissertation studies how labor market flexibility influences individual and family decisions across the life cycle. Through three self-contained essays, it analyzes the effects of remote work, retirement, and family choices on labor supply, financial behavior, and fertility. The first essay, “Work from Home, Quit Behavior, and Monopsony Power: Evidence from the Italian Labor Market” examines how the rapid expansion of remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic transformed job mobility and wage dynamics. Using rich administrative employer-employee data, the analysis shows that occupations with higher potential for remote work experienced a marked decline in voluntary quits after 2020 and a moderation in wage growth. Estimates from the quit elasticity further indicate that the wage elasticity of quits increased, suggesting that remote work altered the trade-off between wage compensation and flexibility, with potential implications for employers’ monopsony power. The second essay, “The Impact of Retirement on Portfolio Allocation: Evidence from Italian Households” - a joint work with Nello Esposito (Ph.D. student, University of Naples Federico II) - studies how retirement affects individuals’ financial behavior using panel data from the Bank of Italy’s Survey on Household Income and Wealth. Exploiting exogenous variation in pension eligibility rules as an instrument for retirement, the study finds that retirement entails a considerable reallocation of individuals’ portfolios toward a significantly higher share of financial assets allocated to stocks. These effects are more substantial among individuals retiring through seniority schemes, consistent with the wealth and income-stability mechanisms predicted by life-cycle and portfolio-choice models. The third essay, “Making Room for a Baby: The Impact of Working from Home on Fertility Decisions” explores whether the diffusion of remote work affected women’s fertility behavior after the pandemic. Combining survey data with occupation-based teleworkability measures, the analysis shows that women in teleworkable occupations were significantly more likely to be on maternity leave after 2020. A two-stage least squares framework confirms that this relationship is not driven by selection into remote work but by the exogenous feasibility of performing tasks from home. The results suggest that increased flexibility in work arrangements reduced the opportunity cost of childbearing, particularly for highly educated and high-income women. Overall, this dissertation highlights the role of labor market flexibility in shaping economic behavior across key life stages - from employment stability to retirement planning and family formation. By linking labor market institutions with household and individual outcomes, it contributes to an understanding of how the changing nature of work interacts with economic decision-making.

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